For some reason I'm inspired to take this opportunity to say, to anyone who has any reservations about applying to YC: do it. Right now. Then do your best to nail the interview and get picked. This has been (already!) one of the best experiences of my life. The people that you get to meet and learn from - not just the amazing speakers they bring in, but the rest of the group you're in and the network of founders are the best part. It's all about being exposed to success and constantly hearing about and seeing the factors of success and being inspired to keep working, persist, iterate, make what people want. One of the best realizations for me has been that the people who succeed aren't that different from any of us. If they can do it, so can we. If we can do it, so can you.
I would tell myself to apply earlier! Although I've learned a crazy amount about a lot of things in the last 10 years, I've just relearned a lot of them (better this time) in the past 2 months. The thing about it is, there's this perception that the people who do these things are so much smarter, more experienced, more something than you, but that's not necessarily true, so what's stopping you? Just yourself.
I turned 30 last year, and I'm the youngest of our 3 founders, so I'm feeling my age a bit. The RescueTimers skew the average age higher a bit, but not by that much, There are people ten years older than me here, too, for sure.
1. Make something people want. 2. Don't die until you do #1. 3. There's nothing stopping you except yourself - the people who read this site are already further ahead than they might think. 4. Distribution is key, and is easier to get if you're doing #1. 5. Talking to important people (selling yourself!) is easy and fun if you're doing #1. 6. Don't think - do. Perfection is the enemy of good enough, and good enough is the enemy of at all. (That came from Paul Buchheit). 7. Launch fast, launch often. There's more, I should probably write a blog post about it but I'm wasting time when I should be doing #1. :)
